VIDEO: CosmoView Episode 25: Caught Speeding: Clocking the Fastest-Spinning Brown Dwarfs view more
Credit: Images and Videos: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva, P. Marenfeld, NASA/JPL-Caltech, R. Hurt (IPAC).
Music: zero-project - The Lower Dungeons (zero-project.gr).
Astronomers at Western University have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs known. They found three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. That rate is so extreme that if these failed stars rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing themselves apart. Identified by NASA s Spitzer Space Telescope, the brown dwarfs were then studied by ground-based telescopes including Gemini North, which confirmed their surprisingly speedy rotation.
Black hole pairs found in distant merging galaxies
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Explore the Universe during AstroDay–Chile
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IMAGE: This illustration imagines what the distant object nicknamed Farfarout might look like in the outer reaches of our Solar System. The most distant object yet discovered in our Solar System,. view more
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva
With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF s NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed Farfarout is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union.
Farfarout was first spotted in January 2018 by the Subaru Telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai i. Its discoverers could tell it was very far away, but they weren t sure exactly how far. They needed more observations.